Riza Hates Valentine's
by Oedipus Tex
Summary: Riza hates Valentine's. Riza hates Roy. When Riza has to face Roy and Valetine's together, what's a girl to do? Young Royai-ish, maybe. Featuring Lovelorn!Bethold(?)


**AN: Please forgive my self-indulgence by putting an Earth holiday in FMA-world. Also, this thing is unbetaed, so if you notice any mistakes, let's pretend they're on purpose, for artistic reasons. **

**Also, sadly, I don't own the rights to FMA. That belongs to Hiromu Arakawa and associates. That's right. Arakawa, like the river. Hiromu, like what Relena Peacecraft would say were she a cow ("Heero-mooo!") Seriously though, Arakawa deserves all the respect. Buy her stuff and give her some love.**

**By the way, this is a present for Antigone Rex. Whimsical! (Maybe) Because we're both pretend Greek. Well, maybe Antigone isn't pretending. But I am.**

**And if you're not reading Antigone's fics, you are missing out.  
**

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**Riza Hates Valentine's**

* * *

These were the ten things Riza, 12 years old, loved:

1) Medieval Knights, be-armored in armor that shone like glass, and their bare faces shining more so. And their eyes angled heavenward, not in benediction or religious zeal (Oh, my God! Do I pray

. . .), but in love.

2) Medieval Maidens, flaxen-haired and whose lips were bowed (like ships' bows or ribbon bows, Riza didn't know which), and who—the lucky girls!—pet unicorns with nimble yet limp hands. And wearing ridiculous hats upon their foreheads, pointed like the horns of the unicorns they fondled.

3) Medieval Unicorns, with milk-glade eyes (and no hats). Evolution's treated the unicorn unusually: pictures show they were once small, lion-like, deer animals, but now become horses with narwhal rods protruding from between their eyebrows. The rods were like the hats, but not.

These were the rest of the things Riza loved: dolphins and kittens, dolphins and kittens painted living in outer space, stuffed animals, glitter, butterflies, make-up, ponies.

This is what Riza hated:

1) Valentine's Day

Riza had decided the Valentine's Day thing by herself, whereas she'd been told about the other things. She'd also decided on the matter of Medieval hats herself too, but all her disagreements she uttered into the palm of her hand, because she didn't want to argue with _The List_. Riza didn't like to argue because she realized she wasn't like other girls. The other girls giggled and preened and were so witty and vibrant. They had fancy frocks and fancy hair and fancy stockings without holes in them. And they love love loved Valentine's Day. Unlike Riza. When asked her opinion on it, Riza said: "Criminy!"

That's the word she put on her essay:

_My Feelings about Valentine's Day_

_by Riza Hawkeye_

**_Crimonee!_**

Miss Isabella Kant was Riza's schoolteacher. She wore her hair piled up like a Gibson girl and pinned a pink satin azalea to her blouse. The flower was large, competing with leg o' mutton sleeves that looked like they came off a Holstein. Riza didn't know about a woman who pinned large flowers on her anatomy, just below a heaving bust, and right above a waist squeezed into a shape that'd make a wasp blink. Whenever Miss Isabella walked into a room already occupied by the male teachers, the entire room seemed to shift down.

But there was _that_. Whenever she entered a room, the room noticed.

The day after Riza handed in her essay, Miss Isabella called her in from lunch. They sat at her desk while the sounds of child gaiety and brambling birds wafted through the open door, as well as the smell of ham sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. Riza's stomach rumbled, because she had her own ham sandwich to eat, but she looked at Miss Isabella with all the patience in the world.

"I wanted to speak to you about your essay," Miss Isabella said.

Riza's heart telegraphed an SOS down to her toes, but she answered primly, "Yes, Miss Isabella?"

"This is your essay." Miss Isabella laid the single sheet of paper down, its content so precise and succinct. "And this is Anne's." She threw a hand-scrawled tome onto her tabletop. Fearing, Riza darted her fingers away before it landed.

"Anne has a lot of feelings about Valentine's Day," Riza observed.

"Ye-es. But, little mouse, do you see how you could have done better?"

Riza bent her nose forward, and saw how there were many more words in Anne's essay, words like: _love_, _kisses_, and _many-splendored boys_. All Riza could make out of it was Anne had been hitting the books. "But this essay really is my feelings," she said.

"There wasn't any effort, Riza. And you shouldn't use the word . . ." Miss Isabella held her breath, before continuing in a lowered voice, " 'crimony.' It isn't a lady-like word. I will have to speak to your father about this, I'm afraid."

Miss Isabella eyed Riza narrowly, as if expecting to see a show of begging. Most children would rather a switch across the knuckles than get the Pater involved, but Riza's father preferred not to be bothered, and did a remarkable job of keeping it that way. If he did berate, he did it disinterestedly, before doing it dreamy, before ending it by wandering off halfway through. And he was the one who told Riza to say "criminy" anyway.

It was preferable to the words Roy was teaching her.

"What does it mean?" Riza had asked, when Father said "criminy" was better. But Father had already wandered back to his study, leaving Riza to it. She couldn't find the dictionary, so she had decided "criminy" had to do with criminals. And Valentine's Day seemed criminal.

"Little Miss Riza," Miss Isabella said, clasping her hands together like a cherub in a painting, and the light bouncing off her curls like some ridiculous halo, "You must be lady-like in all your interactions. You want the boys to _like_ you, don't you?"

The boys already didn't like Riza. Criminy wasn't going to make one bit of difference.

**. . . **

Miss Isabella was from Central, and came to their little town with a lot of funny notions. (Roy said she probably came with a venereal disease too, but when Riza asked what he meant, he changed the subject.) Central schoolchildren didn't just celebrate Valentine's Day by exchanging handmade paper-and-lace valentines . . . they also purchased heat-shaped suckers a committee delivered to the lucky sods who got them. This was supposed to be "loads and loads and just _oodles_ of fun." When Miss Isabella told her class they were going to do that this year, the girls set to the whispering and giggling which set Riza apart. Riza just looked out the window at the dirty yellow-parchment fields and sighed. _What a life_.

"Riza?" Miss Isabella crept up after lunch and put her hand on Riza's shoulder. "Is that young man of your father's coming today?"

Riza hoped not. She didn't want Roy Mustang ever coming to her school again.

**. . .**

Three seconds after the school bell rang, a black head appeared like a nightmare of Mephistopheles before Riza's eyes. It belonged to Roy, of course. He leaned in at the open window, a smirk tightening his lips across his teeth, and a crinkle at his eyes. Riza's desk was right next to the window, so she couldn't pretend not to see him.

"'Lo, Riza," he said.

Roy spoke as if he got waylaid at a _Boy's Own Magazine_ festival and had been forcibly infused with all the modern attitude expected of today's boys. He chortled when he should have laughed, whooped when he should have grinned, and leapt when he should have jumped. He was confident in the wrong places. Hopefully, he'd grow out of it.

Riza glowered. "What are you doing here?"

"Checking out the goods!" Roy tilted his head at the other girls. The girls, sensing his presence, blushed and waved at him. And then they flashed their fancy frocks.

"I don't want you here."

Roy raised his eyebrows, but before he replied, Miss Isabella cooed from her desk, "Mr. Mustang, so glad to see you!"

"Hello, Miss Kant. Nice to see the flowers are in bloom."

Riza gave Roy a look that made it clear what she thought of him, but he only winked back. Miss Isabella asked, "Are they?" and then Roy ducked behind the window against the siding, shoulders shaking. Miss Isabella's pert smile told at once of her flattered emotions, and that she couldn't see Roy at all.

"Mr. Mustang," she said, "be a sweetheart and deliver this to Mr. Hawkeye for me." She strode forward with an envelope in her hand, which Roy took through the window. His eyes tracked to Riza first, before he nodded solemnly at Miss Isabella and tucked the letter to his chest, as if it was a cherished gift. His smile was sarcastically beatific. Riza grabbed her books and hustled out the door.

It took Riza a minute to find Roy, as he stood a few yards down the path, behind a bee-hivey juniper the size of a large bovine. He was holding the envelope up to the sky, arching his lean back in a curve Riza wanted to smash. The little sneak was trying to read the letter! Riza almost snatched it away, but she didn't like to fight with Roy in public. It always got messy. She'd wait until they were out-of-town.

"Let's go," she said, and making sure he was following, set the path for home.

Roy came to town nearly every day to walk Riza home from school. Father was a harsh taskmaster, but he couldn't handle the energy levels of a Roy Mustang, being more accustomed to Riza's "lethargy." By the time afternoon hit, Father released Roy so he might nurse a headache. Nursing a headache meant drinking that horrid citric acid, or taking those cocaine headache drops, which weren't horrid at all.

Riza hardly managed Roy either, who'd rather tempt her to paint the town red with him than go home straightaway to start chores, but she was getting better. He needed a firm hand, because even-though he was ill-mannered, he was not mean-spirited. He was just used to getting what he wanted. So today, Riza indulged him, listening to him talk inanely about what he was learning in alchemy, what his aunt told him on the phone about behaving himself, and about how if Miss I's sleeves got any bigger she'd have to start walking sideways through the doorways. It wasn't until they entered the copse of sessile oaks separating the town from House Hawkeye that Riza snatched the letter.

"Hey!" Roy said, but he made no motion to get it back, rocking back on his heels instead. "What'll Miss I say?"

"Miss Isabella thanks you kindly for your trouble."

"Not kindly enough."

Riza felt her face heat up, and gripped the letter more strong. "It's about me."

"No kidding?"

Not knowing if Roy's tone was sarcastic or genuinely surprised, she ignored him. It was usually better not to know with him. She directed her attention to the letter.

It was in a sealed envelope. The handwriting said "Mr. Berthold Hawkeye", and was floral and curvy in all the right places, and Riza would have felt infinitely better if it had been blocky and mismanaged instead. Slowly, she tilted the envelope up, and then just making out the barest hint of the contents, she lifted it against the sun. It only revealed more so how little she could read.

Roy was a scamp, but he had some good ideas. His next idea wasn't so good.

He said: "Open it."

Riza slammed the letter to her skirt. "I can't do that." She worried her lip with her canine. "Father will know."

Roy shot a quick smirk that broiled her alive: he was laughing at her! She thought if she tossed her book strap against his head, it'd only be right, but he said, "I can use alchemy. I can unseal it and reseal it and no one will ever know."

"Really?"

"For reallys. It's alchemy."

Riza didn't put as much faith in alchemy as Roy and her father did, but she had to admit Roy made a fine tempter. A very bad one too. She had never been so tempted in her life. "It would be immoral . . ." she said.

Roy shrugged. "I got a bag of sugared almonds from home yesterday."

"Sugared almonds," Riza repeated, and slowly, feeling a disconnect between what her body was doing and what her conscience was saying, she extended the envelope towards Roy.

In a moment, Roy had it pressed against a tree, and was writing a faint array on it with the chalk he kept in his pocket. His fingers curled around the chalk so confident, and Riza felt a flash of jealously that things came so easy to him. Another moment more, and the envelope's top flap peeled up like a fallen leaf drying in the sun. Roy's eyes shone, but Riza wrapped the book strap around her knuckles. Roy opened the envelope, whipped out the letter, and had it read before Riza thought to prevent him. His eyebrows rose, first one, then the other, as if he had to take the shock in measures. Then he held the letter to her, reproach in his eyes.

"You've been a very naughty little girl," he said.

"Only as little as your ego." Riza snapped the letter away and read it.

The letter was on pink stationery with peonies printed in the corner, and at the top, a scrawl of purple oozed: _Life is a Flower for which Love is the Honey_. Riza was appalled, and would have been stunned stupid by the enormous impropriety of this missive, if she wasn't stunned more by what Miss Isabella had wrote:

_Mr. Hawkeye,_

_I'm afraid I'm writing to request an audience with you regarding your daughter's school performance. She is a kind, loveable child, but I've found her often sullen and listless in school. Perhaps, it stems from a lack of mother's care, and is surely no fault of your own. If it is amenable to you, I would like to meet with you this Saturday after school at the schoolhouse to discuss what is to be done._

_Miss Isabella Kant_

Riza raised her eyes to Roy, her stomach feeling as if it had taken a tumble down the stairs.

"My teachers called me all sorts of things," Roy said. He offered her the bag of almonds, the cellophane wrapping crinkling in his hand. "All of them rude, and not at all true to my gentlemanly carriage."

"I hate her." It came out muffled, what with Riza's mouth being stuffed with almonds.

"My aunt said since I couldn't learn to respect my teachers, she'd make me volunteer at the rest home. She said it was 'volunteer work.' Baloney! How was it _volunteer_?"

"These are good," Riza sniffed. "How do you rate?"

"She never got over the guilt of making me go there. I fed a lot of gruel to old people." Roy shuddered, and crammed almonds in his mouth to soothe the pain. "I really hate gruel."

"Father won't care anyway."

"There you go, Riza. Buck up, young lady!" Roy slipped the letter from Riza's hands. His thumb rested warm on her wrist bone, just for a moment. "You're making the letter sticky."

"It smells like her perfume."

Roy sniffed the letter. "Hmm. Smells expensive."

Riza scrubbed her sleeve across her eyes and smiled at Roy. "How could any woman be so stupid?"

Roy laughed. "It is pretty stupid, isn't it?"

"Yeah. How can she be so stupid?"

"One of the great mysteries of the universe." Roy returned the letter to its envelope, and with another chalky scrawl and a finger press, the letter was resealed. The gaze he gave it was proudly contemplative, his eyes hooded. Riza looked at the envelope: Roy was right. It looked as if it had never been opened.

She sighed. "And she didn't trust _me _to deliver it."

"She was right. Look what you made me do."

"What?"

Roy tapped the letter against his chin, his lips wavering with a smile. "She's only eighteen, she says. As innocent as a newborn chick."

"You don't know anything about chicks, city-boy."

"Oh, you don't know about the chicks I've seen," Roy sing-songed, "seen only in the city." He closed Riza's fist on the bag of almonds. "Let's go. Like you said, your father couldn't care less."

Riza slung her book strap over her shoulder and ran blindly away, leaving Roy hallooing he was going to fetch the mail. The edge of her Arithmetic book battered the back of her shoulders, and the dry heather scratched her legs before bursting into atom-sized pieces that hurtled up her nose and made her sneeze. This abuse by the landscape was preferable to Roy's stupidity. He didn't understand anything.

**. . . **

GothicgothicGoTHICgOTHIC**GOTHICgothic**gothicgothic**GOTHICGOTHIC**

Gothic!

!

**Today, I am Gothic.**

**I have a book called The Ghost Baron that Miss Isabella gave me to read. She said it was Gothic but Roy said it was a Shudder novel. I told him what does he know all he does is read Boys Own anyway and I've read Boys own and its nothing but trash. I like the word Gothic better.**

**The book is relly silly. It has all sorts of things in it like ghosts and a girl that's faitning all the time and if she stopped fainting then she could fight the ghosts and be out of danger instead of waiting for that dumb man to save her all the time. But there's some writing in there that relly gets the heart pounding and this is something that was in there that spoke to me**

**It weighs on my back like a corpse. Heavy and stinking. I have to keep going with it on my back, and mustn't look back or shake it off, because to look is to face it for a greater terror.**

**That's how I feel.**

**Now my hand hurts.**

Riza put her pencil down and looked at what she had written. She was uncomfortable, but her physical discomfort eased her. Her belly itched from laying on it, and a spring from the mattress poked her belly button; her legs were hot under the heavy woolen blanket, and her eyes watered from the strain of writing by the light of a dying candle. Riza could just as well light another candle, but lying in bed in a darkened room, writing her woes into her diary, was a Gothic thing to do, and that's what she wanted to be: Gothic.

Miss Isabella's letter was like a request from the Inquisition. An Inquisition was Gothic too, even if Berthold Hawkeye was not. But to a twelve-year old girl, who wanted like a sweet breath to be noticed by her father, his continuing inattention to her, even after receiving the letter, was dark rooms and streaking chambers.

And she _knew_ he read the letter. Riza had already started dinner by the time Roy returned home with the mail, but she stopped cooking long enough to watch him put the mail, and the letter, right on Father's desk. And she stopped cooking long enough to peek in and watch Father read the darned thing, how his eyes got big and how his hands fingered it, as if it was somebody else's dirty laundry. She ran back to the kitchen to vehemently poke holes into potatoes with a fork. Father came in a few minutes later, but instead of yelling at her, he asked for the calendar.

How she wanted to poke holes into Roy for talking so cheerfully on the phone with his aunt, as if the house he was staying in wasn't undergoing a dark and tormenting time!

That's how Riza's evening went. Father didn't say one word about the letter, and Riza stewed and stewed and stewed like a great big pot of stew fit for the whole town. She had her defense ready, but how was she to say it if Father made no demands on her?

"Miss Isabella doesn't understand," she was going to tell him. "I was _supposed_ to say my feelings. Miss Isabella hates me."

Riza didn't know why she cared what Miss Isabella thought anyway. Miss Isabella was silly and committed to romance, and so so shallow without meaning to be. This woman moved into their town in a twinkle of pink and sunlight, and with soft white hands, began to mold and shift the young charges around her. Within five months, her presence was in the very consciousness of the collective mind, and one might not even go a week without hearing her name. The moony wanna-be-poet male teacher said this: _Where her youth befuddles, her beauty dazzles; where her beauty offends, her innocence charms._ Which was about right. She was here to land a husband, except every man, from geezer to baby, was a "sweetheart." The females were "sweet-peas" too, and she blushed walking by the boutique with the corset in the window. She was the most popular creature in town. She was Isabella Kant, spelled with a "K", when Riza was just Can't. Riza can't be flirtatious, can't be pretty, can't be popular, can't be graceful, can't be lively, can't be coy, can't be witty, can't can't can't even get the attention of her own father. Miss Isabella was the anti-thesis of Riza Hawkeye, twelve-years old.

Riza flipped her diary to a new page and wrote the only true thing in it:

**I wish I was like Miss Isabella.**

**. . . **

The day of her father's _Meeting _with Miss Isabella came, and Riza slinked out of the house early and silent to school. There were times during the past two days when she thought Father was going to say something, but he never did, even though he sent such introspective expressions to her at dinner that it gave her the heebie-jeebies. He should just take the potatoes without looking like that. And Miss Isabella had the common decency of a snake in the grass not to say anything either, although she was still a blackguard: two giggling-coy twelve-year olds in red sashes began delivering the Valentine's suckers at lunch. Riza wouldn't get one. She didn't have money to buy any herself. But she hoped. She sat under the silver birch tree, spreading her skirt over her knees and trying to look as poised as the other girls. But no suckers came to her. Except the sucker named Roy.

He showed up at the end of the day as he always did, and he got _three _suckers, even though he didn't go to school. He took them with cool detachment, not surprised at all, and jammed all three in his mouth. He had probably given and received truckfuls of candy when he'd gone to school in Central.

Riza didn't say one word to him, and passed him heading towards home. He caught up by the time she entered the heath, but he didn't say anything either, sucking on his candy thoughtfully. Ahead lay the patch of trees, and from out that patch came a man. There was nothing else out this way, other than Riza's house, so it didn't take two guesses to know who it was. Heading for a devil-spawn tête-à-tête. But when Father appeared proper, clear, solid, and his reality massive, the breath in Riza's lungs hit a road-block, stopping all traffic in that direction. She had never seen her father look like this.

_Gussied up_.

Riza let go of her breath when the edges of her vision darkened. But with full breath or no breath, the facts didn't change. Her father was in full morning dress: black morning coat with a cornflower boutonniere, matching waistcoat, and dove-gray striped trousers that, if showing too much white ankle for being short, were the best quality trousers Riza had ever seen on him. She was impressed upon that there were other fashion appurtenances (a hat, perhaps, a cane even, and an Ascot tie!) but she was so dazzled by his brightness, asking her to describe the details would be like asking a naked-eyed man to chart the spots of the sun.

Roy whistled. "Who's that lady-killer coming this way?"

Father mumbled something as he passed, but he went a little proud in the face, and even smug, for an instant. Riza stood only two feet away when it appeared, and it blinded her and smelled like cologne. She didn't know her father had cologne.

The strangely masculine and dapper creature went up and down a hill, fading away, and left the world behind a little less bright.

"_Mutta mutta_," Riza said. The words were nonsense, but her system had suffered a horrible shock.

"Well," Roy said, "it's good to see the old boy dressed up for a change. Although, geez, he must have dug pretty far back in the closet to find that stuff. _A cornflower _boutonniere?"

"_Blurble_," qouth Riza.

An animalistic snort burst out of Roy, and Riza became aware for the first time he had been holding back laughter. The laughter beat him though—soundly about the ears too, for their color. Roy held a hand over his face, and then stumbled into a leftover snow hill from last week's blizzard. The snow crunched underneath the weight of his thighs; it must be soaking his trousers through. He didn't care. He howled, his face becoming like a Merlot grape.

"It isn't funny," Riza said. As Roy vibrated with uncontrollable giggling, uncontrollable suspicions ignited inside Riza's mind, like campfires in the night. She pressed her foot into Roy's chest. He _oomph_ed but she pinned him down until the snow flecked a crown in his hair. "What did you do?"

"Ri—"

"Tell me." Riza's heel sank into the soft part of Roy, at the spot where his ribcage gave way to his belly.

"He's—what? He's only going to see your teacher. Lord, Riza, you're a tyrant!"

"_You're_ a worm."

"Get off!"

"I'm going to squish your bones into pâté if you don't tell me."

Laughter and excitement brightened Roy's eyes, breaching a star in them.

"Masochist!" Riza pressed harder.

Bucking, Roy threw Riza's weight off him. He grabbed her ankle, hovering just above his sternum, and twisted. Riza's weight-bearing foot skidded against the snow, peppery with dirt and the scum of the earth, and Riza dove face-first into it. She discovered the crust of the hill wasn't wont to give, but what was underneath was still wet and thick. Roy lifted her head by the hair.

"You're father's going to kill me if I kill you."

"I'm not dead."

Roy let go of Riza, and she sat up on her knees. They regarded each other, breathing hard. Riza hoped Roy's knees were as cold as her own.

"You did something," she said.

"Well . . . yeah." Then, with a chortle, Roy said, "But I'll never tell, tee hee!" He leapt up and ran for the house. Lucky Benjamin Brown's errant goat, saying "ne-eh-eh!" burst out of the brush, aiming for Roy's heels. Roy's ankles sailed past the nubbly horns and the boy himself cackled.

"Roy!" Riza took up a handful of snow, packed it tight, and lobbed it. It mostly fell apart mid-flight, being the wrong sort of snow, but her aim was true: what remained whalloped the back of Roy's head. He shouted and turned. His grin wavered when Riza dug her hands back into the snow. She had schooled him last snowstorm just how good her aim was. Roy turned tail. Riza ran after.

Beside the benefit of having longer legs, Roy also had a head start, and he had long ducked inside the house by the time Riza got there. He left the door wide open, and heat wafted into Riza's face as she gained the porch. She shut the door silently once stepping inside, and stood still, listening—to the creaks of the old wood in the rafters, the licks of fire in the hearth, the air knocking around the plumbing, and the sweep of the curtain blowing in front of the open window, because Father needed air. Finally, she heard crinkling and the smooth whisper of things being moved in Father's study. When Riza tip-toed to the door, she found Roy within, searching the desk.

"What are you doing?" she cried. Her heart was getting friendly with her tonsils, moving into the neighborhood. If Father knew what Roy was doing . . . well, it'd be necessary to send a bouquet to the next of kin, that was all.

"I'm trying to find it," Roy answered, too languidly for Riza's care.

"Find what—oh!" Riza's appendages seized and then let loose and slippery, and she had to clutch the doorway lest she end up a puddle on the floor. Roy had ripped out an envelope with an exultant, "Here it is!", and now was doing a sort of restrained jig on the floor. His face was puce with his mirth.

When he turned back his normal color (pale), he blurbled, "I was afraid he was keeping in his inner pocket, closest to his chest."

Rubbing her tongue along the backside of her teeth, Riza took the envelope from Roy. It was apparently the most humorous thing this century, but when she looked at it, it was only a stupid old envelope. Familiar, albeit, but still.

"This is—" she said.

"Only the letter Miss Isabella sent your father."

No. That was wrong. Roy wouldn't be so amused if it were true.

But it did look like Miss Isabella's. The scrawl on it was loopy, like the author had gone on one too many carousel rides, or had taken one too many nips of the cocaine headache drops. When Riza took out the letter, it was clearly the same letter. Could she ever forget the pink-and-purple paper that made her so nauseous? But the words . . . .

In a feminine flowing hand, the words said:

_My dearest Mr. Berthold Hawkeye,_

_Please do not think me too forward, for my only dearest intent is to make you believe the best of me. I feel keenly how inappropriate my emotion must be, and I have fought it, but alas! In vain. I can hold it back no longer. Indeed, the coming arrival of the Holiday (surely, you now guess what I wish to say) has loaned me a bravery that is not mine from birth, but is now mine to bear. Gladly! I only pray that it is unaccompanied by a vain and too brash hope._

_If there is the slightest hope that my attentions might be interesting to you, please meet with me after school this Saturday to discuss. Meet me at the schoolhouse. I most earnestly look forward to it . . . _

_Most humbly,_

_Miss Isabella Kant_

Riza said the word Father told her not to say.

This was most certainly not the letter Miss Isabella had written. But the same perfume came out of it, fumigating Riza into last century.

"It's the letter your teacher wrote—"

"She did not!"

Roy placed his finger primly over his lips, as if he was thinking seriously and not laughing at Riza at all. "Well . . . no," he admitted.

"You're a jackanapes."

"You don't even know what that is!"

"I do so. I looked it up. I look everything up, Roy. How did you write this?"

Roy sat himself in Father's armchair, leaning his cheek into his fist. A growing look of boredom dulled his eyes. Riza knew that look. It was his retreat when he thought things were getting hairy. Things only got hairy for Roy when he was feeling guilty.

"I erased her other letter," he said.

"With alchemy."

"Of course with alchemy!"

"Alchemy's going to get you into a lot of trouble someday."

"It is not."

The very sight of the letter was like being punched. Riza looked away from it. "So you wrote this instead."

"Yes."

"Don't be smug." Riza pressed her eyelids shut and thought back to that day, when Roy had delivered the letter. It _had _taken Roy an awful long time to come home, even if he went to get the mail, something he normally did before meeting her at school. She had been too riled up at the time to suspect him. And see now what trouble he caused! The letter! The floridity of the letter! The fluid manuscript, the girlish words—her fingertips prickled where they touched the paper.

"_You _wrote this?"

"Yes." Roy grinned. "Berthold thinks he's got a hot date!" His boyishness was evaporating away, so here was a new creature, who was not just a ham-fisted and harmless flirt. He was much more dangerous than that.

"Where'd you learn to write like this?"

Roy lowered his eyelids sardonically. "_Boy's Own_."

Riza nodded, folded up the letter, and put it back into the desk. Then, since she was so close, she plucked at Roy's wrist, and pinched him good. Roy shouted.

"What the H.E. double-hockey sticks, Riza!"

"I see Father's cured your mouth."

"You want the real word?"

"Yes."

Roy inspected his wrist. "I'm trying to protect your virtue and innocence."

"More like take it!" She didn't really know what she meant, but it seemed like the expected thing to say.

Roy seemed to know what she meant. He grabbed her round the hips, grinning with a yellow gleam in his eye. "Maybe I will."

Pushing her palm against his forehead, Riza got away from him, although a blush burned a fire pit into her nose. She was fluttery and awkward, and there were some other feelings she hadn't felt before, none she could explain, and all of them a little frightening. "Trollop," she said.

Roy pressed his face into the wing of the armchair and snickered. "You've got to stop reading those books."

"Why did you write the letter?"

"Why'd you pinch me?"

"For writing the letter."

"So what? Daddy's got a thrill, and Miss I's going to pop those stays of hers once she sees what he's about."

"What do you know of stays?"

"You'd be surprised."

"We're getting off-track of the conversation." Riza wanted to say Roy had no business talking about stays, but if she did, it'd put the conversation right back off-track again, and nowhere she wanted to go. "You're a terrible person and did a bad thing."

"It's just a prank."

Riza pinched him, this time on the elbow.

"_Ow_! Darnnit, Riza, you left nail marks!"

Riza flounced out to the kitchen, wishing she could do more to Roy Mustang than just nail marks. How could she explain to him what she objected to was not the meanness of the prank, but the possibilities it suggested? A great, pounding, maw-open fear went into her. Egads, what if Father and Miss Isabella hit it off!

. . . Egads!

**. . . **

Berthold Hawkeye returned two hours later. His dinner sat cold on the dining room table, but it was just dumplings anyway. He didn't even go into the dining room. Instead, he went straight to his study, lowered himself into the armchair, and sat, silent and dazed. Then, he opened his desk drawer and withdrew the envelope. He unfolded the letter inside, and blinked at it. Then, he raised it to his nose, and lifting his eyes toward heaven, smelled.

That was that. Riza hated Roy forever.

* * *

1) Valentine's Day

2) Roy Mustang

* * *

**AN: Thanks to Victor Hugo for the ****_Life . . . Flower . . . Honey_**** thing. Miss Isabella's favoritest quote ever!**

**Btw, this was supposed to be up by Earth Valentine's Day . . .lololol! Hopefully, I should have the continuation of this up sometime in the next decade. The people over in the Gundam Wing part of the site know what I'm talking about. :)**


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